Chapter 127: Meeting with the scientists

While Sobek began his sleep, not very far away ('not far' just for say: we are still talking about hundreds of kilometers, which were nothing for a planet as big as Eden) Jocelyne was having a video call with some of the most important scientists in the world. "Forgive me if I disturb you at such a time" she said as she looked at her computer. There were two windows on the screen: on one appeared the faces of Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm and Sarah Hardy, while on the other were Mitch Morgan and Jamie Campbell. In practice, the five scientists who recently had obtained the most significant discoveries: the last two with their studies on Spinosaurus superior and the first three with those on Spinosaurus ingens. "You don't disturb us, Miss Jersey. Rather, we are questioning the reason for your call" Alan replied. He wasn't the only curious one: even the most famous scientists in the world weren't often called by important personalities, so they wondered what had prompted the daughter of an overseas tycoon to ask them for that meeting. Jocelyne sighed. She knew that she would have to rely on all her interlocutory to convince them to listen to her, so she decided to leave biased: "First I'll ask you a question. Do you know what the tenth man is?" The scientists seemed startled by that question, but recovered quickly. "I remember studying it in history classes at the university" Jamie said. "If I remember correctly it was a counter-espionage method used during the Three Hundred Years War" "Exactly. It is more or less based on this principle: if nine men read an information and claim it is false, it is up to the tenth man to investigate the information by assuming that it is absolutely true, it's not important how much unlikely it may appear" Jocelyne said. "Very interesting, but what need was there to brush up on a historical topic?" Ian asked. "There was, because what I'm about to tell you is absolutely unlikely... or so it appears. But you will understand better after I have explained it to you" Jocelyne said, and then began to tell: "Two years ago I was saved by a dinosaur, which not only showed a marked intelligence but also an extraordinary empathy. A few months later, professor Morgan here confronted that same dinosaur and discovered that he was not afraid of fire, denoting an almost human intelligence. And then, a few months ago another dinosaur not only destroyed Flagard City, it allowed other zoo animals to escape with it. And if you don't believe my last statement... well, look" Jocelyne shared a video with the others; it was a satellite overview of the city of Flagard City, taken the night of the accident. "Watch the movements of the spinosaurus and the other dinosaurs. At first glance they may seem random, but if you look at them as a whole you realize that there is a precise pattern behind them. First, the spinosaurus breaks through the carnotaur's enclosure, which CASUALLY escapes to the power plant. The carnotaur could distance it, but CASUALLY despite being able to run up to 56 km/h it doesn't accelerate to more than 40 km/h. Always CASUALLY the two dinosaurs crash and destroy the power plant, which CASUALLY frees all the other dinosaurs, and CASUALLY the carnotaur remembers that it can run at 56 km/h only at that moment. The dinosaurs flee, but CASUALLY seem to search for human-free areas, and CASUALLY disappear mysteriously after finding them, not to mention the fact that the spinosaurus appears to be CASUALLY around to rush to their aid if they have difficulty with capture teams. Now, most of the dinosaurs have disappeared after taking refuge under canopies, tents or other obstacles that prevent us from seeing, but fortunately two of them remained in the open. Observe" The shot stopped on two kentrosaurs fleeing in an alley as the spinosaurus pushed away the capture teams. The scientists widened their eyes: while the predator distracted the humans, the two herbivores vanished into thin air! "But... but this is impossible!" Sarah exclaimed. "It must be a problem with the camera, or with the satellite..." "The video had been analyzed by an expert that I hired and compared with the videos recorded by at least another dozen satellites. They all show the same scene: two large herbivores disappearing, or at least becoming invisible to sight" Jocelyne said. "Now, I'm not an expert on the subject, but I assume kentrosaurs don't have mimetic abilities, right?" "You say well. Or at least... they shouldn't have them" Mitch muttered, also shocked. "And you think ...?" "... that the other dinosaurs have also acquired this ability? Well, CASUALLY they all disappeared without a trace. Tell me, how high are the chances that many different species will all develop mimicry at the same time?" Jocelyne asked. "Doing a quick calculation... almost zero" Alan replied, then looked at the others as if hoping they would provide an answer. "If anyone has another opinion..." "No, professor Grant, I agree with you" Mitch said. "A single species that suddenly develops mimicry is already an absurd event, but several species together? It doesn't make sense" "I see you agree with me. And that's not all: tell me, how is it possible that the dinosaurs hadn't shown this ability before, while they were locked up, while they all CASUALLY used it during the escape? And why did they CASUALLY try to vanish away from human eyes, as if they wanted to prevent us from finding out?" Jocelyne asked again. The five scientists turned worried looks. The more the discussion went on, the more the situation seemed more and more unlikely. Dinosaurs were already highly unlikely to develop mimicry, but why didn't humans ever notice? It was impossible that the animals hadn't shown this characteristic in the long period they had been confined in cages. But what if the dinosaurs didn't want to show it? Why do everything to not be seen by humans if the only thing an animal in danger was thinking about was survival? The more they thought about it, the more scientists began to see a pattern behind the Flagard City incident, but it was impossible... this assumed that... Jamie finally voiced everyone's thought: "Miss Jersey, correct me if I'm wrong, but do you think dinosaurs have developed some form of intelligence?" Jocelyne's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe it... I'm sure of it" she replied. "If you look at the individual episodes, the Flagard City accident can seem, in fact, an accident, completely unsuspected. However, if you put the pieces together, it is clear that there is a very well calculated plan behind it. If you look closely at the behavior of the dinosaurs it becomes clear that their goal was to not be discovered by humans; otherwise, why not blend in immediately? Considering they were running away from the spinosaurus that would have been the obvious choice, right? What if they weren't escaping from the spinosaurus at all, but their goal was to escape without revealing their abilities to us? If we look at the images, CASUALLY the spinosaurus always attacked the capture teams, when instead its best choice would have been to aim at the dinosaurs. Why? More than hunting, it seemed to be facilitating the escape of the dinosaurs. Furthermore, there is another thing I want to show you" Jocelyne tapped on the keyboard and the satellite camera moved across the ocean, a few hours away, framing a ship. "Watch what happens now" Initially nothing happened, but suddenly a large black shape appeared next to the boat. Unfortunately it was dark so it was impossible to see what was happening or what was on the boat, but by the size it seemed to be the spinosaurus. However, instead of attacking the ship, it remained alongside it for a while, with its head slightly bent as if it were staring at something on the deck, and then it dived; in a short time, however, it returned dragging a whale, which it tore to pieces and threw on the ship. Because of the darkness it was impossible to understand why it was doing that. "What the...?" The scientists were thrilled. What was going on? The spinosaurus' behavior made no sense at all... "You can understand what is happening if we go a little further in time and continue to follow the ship" Jocelyne said, making several satellite images appear. "CASUALLY, every single night, when we can't see what happens on the ship, the spinosaurus returns to the boat and stops near the hull. Why should it do that? If we look at the ship's route, we can see that the spinosaurus sightings occurred about three hundred kilometers further south. So every day the spinosaurus was back and forth from the ship, and this, CASUALLY, prevented us from discovering the boat. It really seems that he wanted to lure us elsewhere, distracting us and preventing us from noticing that a ship didn't have a crew... because yes, from the satellite images taken during the day we can see that there is no one on the ship. Or at least... there was no one there until it found itself a short distance from the coast" Jocelyne showed them another satellite image, this time during the day. Scientists nearly fainted: after the spinosaurus tapped the hull three times, dinosaurs of various species appeared on the ship's deck. They could recognize a carnotaur, an allosaurus and an ankylosaurus, and even if there was no way to prove it, they had no doubt that they were the dinosaurs who escaped from Flagard City. Which probably meant that the other dinosaurs were hiding inside the ship! "What was that freighter carrying?" Jamie asked as a pattern took shape in her mind. Jocelyne immediately confirmed her thoughts: "I tracked the ship and I know it was carrying over 200,000 tons of vegetables and fruit, suitable for the diet of herbivorous dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were just lucky enough to CASUALLY choose a boat loaded with food suitable for herbivores, as there are no plants in the sea. As for carnivores... do we have to remember the whale?". Her rhetorical question made the scientists hold their breath. "In case you were wondering, the ship crashed in the port of Touron a few days ago. Inside it there was no living being. No dinosaurs and no crews. CASUALLY they had all disappeared" Jocelyne was silent, waiting for the scientists to have their say. Not easy, since in a few minutes their perception of the world had been completely upset. Everyone knew that dinosaurs were common animals, with no trace of intelligence... so why did all those unlikely events seem to belong to a meticulously studied escape? "Intelligent dinosaurs? But that's not possible! We are talking about creatures that don't possess brain abilities like those of humans!" Sarah exclaimed. "Or at least, they shouldn't have them... but I can't explain how that's possible..." "Actually there is an explanation" Jocelyne interrupted. "Jackson, let him in" The door next to her opened and Jackson ushered in her guest, who turned out to be a man with dark, slightly curly hair, a shaved, grayish beard and with a certain similarity to the bodyguard of the Jersey scion. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dr. Robert Oz"